Special teams has been a hit-or-miss proposition for the Panthers this season.

Even though their power play percentage is ranked sixth in the league coming into Wednesday, the Panthers went long stretches without having much success with the advantage.

Lately, however, the Panthers have been doing better and have six power-play goals in their past four games and are scoring at a 22 percent clip throughout the course of the season.

“We’ve had some consistency in our personnel and haven’t tweaked it too much,” coach Kevin Dineen said. “We have had different guys playing with each other. But when you have a guy like Brian Campbell out on the power play, I believe good things follow.”

Killing off penalties has not seen much success this season, however.

The Panthers are ranked last in the league in penalty kill proficiency, allowing goals almost 26 percent of the time.

Things have looked up lately, however, as Florida has shut down its opponents in two of the past three games. In the game the Panthers did give up goals, Washington got three of them — two to NHL power-play leader Alex Ovechkin.

“We’re not into making excuses around here,” said assistant coach Gord Murphy, the former Panthers defenseman who is in charge of the penalty kill.

“We’re not happy with where it is at. We had high expectations for it; it has been good for us in the past and is such a critical component of the game these days. Special teams, that’s something everyone talks about. It’s a concern. We’ve been frustrated with it at times.”